Inventive concepts relate to a method of fabricating a semiconductor device, and more particularly, to a semiconductor device, a method of fabricating the same, and an apparatus used in fabrication thereof.
In fabrication of semiconductor devices, contact technologies for obtaining low contact resistance values may be required to produce high performance semiconductor devices. A metal silicidation process has been widely used in formation of contact structures having a low contact resistance value. For example, a metal layer such as a cobalt (Co) layer or a nickel (Ni) layer may be deposited on a silicon substrate or a polysilicon layer and the metal layer may be annealed to form a cobalt silicide (CoSix) layer or a nickel silicide (NiSix) layer. In addition, after impurity ions are implanted into active regions of a silicon substrate to form source/drain regions, the impurity ions in the source/drain regions may be activated to reduce contact resistance values of the source/drain regions.